Greg Palast, reporter for Harper’s magazine and Rolling Stone, explains how the primary goal of oil companies is to use the war power of the national governments to restrict supplies in order to artificially increase the price of oil, the consequences of the war in Iraq on the price we pay, the fight over control of Caspian oil in the Georgian conflict, the chicken-egg argument about the role of the oil companies and the Pentagon itself in pushing all this imperial expansion, the hidden government taxation in your price of gas per gallon, the truth that the taxpayer bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are ultimately bailouts for foreign holders of U.S. debt rather than home owners, and his new project “Steal Back Your Vote.”

MP3 here. (24:18)

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse (Penguin 2006). His first reports appeared on BBC television and in the Guardian newspapers. Author of another New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George. His reports on the theft of election 2004, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq’s oil fields have won him a record six “Project Censored” for reporting the news American media doesn’t want you to hear. He returned to America to report for Harper’s magazine.